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Thursday, 8 February 2018

Rehabilitating the National Party – Part II: Bill English tries to jump the Liminal Gap

In our last post we
looked at why the 46% National currently enjoys in the political polls was not
worth dookie and in reality is little more than a fig leaf (or band aid)
covering up the issues that bedevil the party in the wake of the recent
election loss to the Labour/NZ First and Green coalition.

So in this post
lets rip aside that fig leaf (or rip off that band-aid) aside and see what
turgid horrors lie beneath*.

The National Party,
as we know and love it, is now starting to seethe with rebellion, if the media can be believed, in the wake of the recent election loss (although to be fair they did not loose the election they lost the coalition negotiations - but more on that next post) and those rumbling are
becoming very public with discussions about how long Bill English will remain as
leader.

Of course National
has always conducted it's business behind closed doors (unlike Labour) and the means
and the process of leadership selection (be it drawing names from a hat, blood sacrifice
or some other method) remain mostly unknown to us except for it seems to boil down to numbers plus influence.

What we do know is
that despite its facade of unity National is in fact comprised of various
factions which fight a shadow war with each other for both control and
leadership of the party. However these conflicts have not always remained in
the shadows and have often spilled over into the public area on more than one occasion;
usually in the form of one side leaking emails and documents to the public and
media which in the end makes both both parties look bad.

For example the
information and documents which Nicky Hagar used to write The Hollow Men in
2005 came from six National party insiders; or the Collin's/Joyce spat from
2012, which again saw embarrassing details and info leaked; or the counterrevolution against political adviser Simon Lusk in 2013 (where Lusk tried to
exterminate the less right-wing elements of the party); and Todd Barclay scandal in 2017, where the political rupture was so severe and public it lead
to ex-tobacco lobbyist Barclay leaving politics and destroyed Bill English’s
reputation as an “honest man”.

All of these, and
other lesser moments, show that National is not the broad church it paints
itself as under that roof of 46% popularity but is instead riven with
infighting and rivalries on par with the inner working of the Third Reich**. For example, John Key, as supreme leader, utilized his own Fuhrerprinzip to keep the various
lesser members of the party competing with one another, and not plotting against
him, while steering the overall direction of the party during his time.

And with the
election now over and National facing a possible nine years in opposition there
is nothing left to hold back the various factions from squabbling for the top
job and taking control of the party.

However, before we
delve too far into that conflict let’s take a moment to note that almost all of
the last 20 years of National party info that has been released to the media
shows that the core of this struggle is
between those who want to take the party further to the Right (making it more
like ACT) and those who want to steer a more moderate/centrist course or, to be
clearer, those who want to continue the Right Wing reforms National has championed
for the last 30 years and those who see the damage that following such a path
has done to the long term chances of the party (and, in their estimation,
possibly NZ).

Not sure what that
damage is? Well read this link from the Standard, it’s
there in black in white all the way back in 2012. National is now the entirety of
the political right*** and its economic views and opinions favor its rich-list
supporters and MPs (who are often very rich as well) over anyone else and
its only been a concerted Right-Wing smear campaign against the left (ala Dirty
Politics) and Labours own ineptitude which has kept National as a viable
political contender when inequality, the Housing Hernia and FukYoo Politix are
rising by the day.

But if that analysis is too heavy for you look at it like this: In the age of personality and centrist politics (which we are in now but possibly not for much longer) ideology prevents people from viewing a political party with an opposing ideology positively. And if that party's ideology (be it left or right) is unpalatable, then your average swing voter is not going to swing that way which means that any voter with a shred of left or centrist thought will veer away from National and towards anything else (be it Labour, the Greens or, heavens forbid, NZ First).

And now, with the
election over, the knives are again being sharpened, the struggle for where
the party is heading has stated up again and this time it’s Bills Head that’s being
lined up, like John the Baptist, for the platter.

Under Jolly John
Key, the party moderates were in charge as after the disaster of the Brash Coup
in 2003 and Nationals continued support for the death camp march of free market reform (see the Hollow Men) the party was headed for meltdown as it was
reduced to playing the racism card via Don Brash’s now infamous Orewa speech, and while it produced a polling boost it was still ultimately far too ugly for
the general electorate (hence National loosing the 2005 election) and it was only the astounding political popularity of
Key which carried the party through 2008 and for the next nine years.

And I say "caretaker" because anyone who thought otherwise was only ever fooling themselves (and possibly Bill) as the moment John Key stepped aside the various factions in National started jockeying for power again only to be brought together for the sake of pre-election unity and the promise of another three years in power if they win.

So now, with the election over (and lost), the battle
for the soul of National has resumed with a vengence and in the transition period (the liminal gap*5 if you will) between government and opposition; between moderate social conservatism
and extreme economic fundamentalism; between the rabidly high personal popularity
of John Key buoying up the party and the dullard antics of English and the rest
of the gang of five*4 dragging the party down; there is this space, this time, between the end of one era and the start of another, where anything is possible and nothing is set.

In this zero space between one paradigm ending (that of the Key years) and another starting (take your pick) there is a power vacuum and as we all know nature abhors a vacuum and so apparently do National party MPs.

Key was, no pun
intended, the keystone of National party strategy for the last decade and his
mana was such that they stuck his face on everything, making him not only the
face of the party but in essence the party itself. It was as if Ronald McDonald
stopped being the mascot and now ran the company lock, stock and barrel.

Now, without Key, the
same problems that were boiling up under Brash are back coming to the surface
again and the only thing holding them back in the wake of Key leaving was the
promise from English to get them back into power in the 2017 election.

Well that did not
happen and only fools are betting on English being around in 2020 because to do
that he has to get across that “gap” that I mentioned before and to make it
safely across the liminality gap of National Party and NZ Politics English
would have to carry out the kind of born again, Jesus rebirth that few, if any,
politicians can do: I mean who does he think he is: Winston Peters?

Long story short,
English is neither the face of the extreme right wing of National nor the kinder
gentler moderate face of National (given how badly he has been tarred as a liar and general political waste of space in the last 12 months) and sooner or later the new paradigm will coalesce
into the next phase of National and English, nothing more than the sad shadow
of John Key, will need to be replaced by either another economic acolyte (ala
Don Brash) or centrist (ala John Key).

Bill English has
always been portrayed in the media as a “safe pair of hands” but safe pairs of
hands are not what leadership is all about and with predators like Judith
Collins circling (and my National party source, T, confirms that such is the
case) it’s only a matter of time before one of the pretenders to the throne
plucks up the nerve and the numbers to make their move.

We can discuss the
possible leadership issue in the next post but no matter what the future of
National is Bill English is not it, as he has neither the super-star popularity
of Key or Ardern nor the political stones (or the political credibility) to be
leader of the party in opposition.

And recent coverage in the media has summed it up nicely so I will just say “what
she said” when it comes to assessing why it’s better for English to go now, while the parties fortunes are still high rather than piss it away, like he did
in 2002, by refusing to see the inevitable.

Thus I end here with this quote from Oliver Cromwell who, I think, sums it up best:

"You have sat too long for any good you have been doing lately... Depart, I say; and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!"

*-And both
definitions of the word can apply in this context

**-un-tense your
fingers and go read about how the Reich was run before you git pissy about this
comparison

***-unless you
include ACT, but who would do that? Oh wait, National does/did (see their recent idea to clone itself).

*4-Brownlee,
Collins, Smith, Joyce and Bennett

*5-I did not make this concept up but finding a source to attribute to it was not possible so i will just admit that here

Itsa me!

Political pyromaniac; born again democrat; satirical connotator; fascist anarchist; relaxed conservative; focused liberal; consumer of truth, witch-hunter general of lies and putter of the praxis into perfect!